Emma Guffey Miller

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Emma Guffey Miller and Senator Edward R. Burke, author of an Equal Rights Amendment

Emma Guffey Miller (July 6, 1874 – February 23, 1970) was American feminist activist and long-time Democratic party official. She was a major proponent of an Equal Rights Amendment for women.

Early life[]

Miller was born Mary Emma Guffey on July 6, 1874, at Guffey Station, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania to John Guffey (a businessman who worked in oil, gas, and coal) and Barbaretta (Hough) Guffey. She had one brother, Joseph Guffey, who became a US senator.[1] Miller attended Bryn Mawr College, graduating in 1899.[1] She taught for three years before meeting Carroll Miller on a trip to Japan, where he (an engineer, business executive, and government official) was then working.[2] They married on October 28, 1902 and continued to live in Japan for five years, part of which time she taught.[2] They had four children: William Gardner III (born 1905), twins John and Carroll, Jr. (1908), and Joseph (1912).[1]

Public life[]

Miller was a supporter of the women's suffrage movement and in the 1920s was one of the organizers who brought Democratic women's clubs together into the Pennsylvania Federation of Democratic Women.[1] From 1921 to 1925 she was a member of the Pennsylvania board of League of Women Voters, but a dedicated Democrat, she resigned over the group's insistence on nonpartisanship.[1] She also actively supported the repeal of Prohibition as well as US Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman.[1]

Miller was a delegate to every Democratic national convention beginning in 1924, when she became the first woman to receive votes for a Presidential nomination, until her death more than half a century later.[3] She also became a member of the Democratic National Committee in 1930.[3]

Miller was a member of the National Woman's Party, in 1960 becoming chair.[3] In this capacity she worked for an Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the Constitution, insisting that suffrage was only a half-measure and failed to put women on an equal basis with men in the business sphere. She said: "We are out of the idiot class, but still in the children's class."[3] In 1938, she testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in support of the ERA proposed by Senator Burke and in 1943 she persuaded the Democratic Party to include the ERA in the party platform.[1]

Personal life[]

Miller's husband died in 1949. Miller died of a heart attack on February 23, 1970, in Grove City, Pennsylvania.[1] Then 95, she was the oldest member of the Democratic National Committee.[3]

References[]

  1. ^ Jump up to: a b c d e f g h "Miller, Emma Guffey (1874–1970)." Dictionary of Women Worldwide: 25,000 Women Through the Ages, edited by Anne Commire and Deborah Klezmer, vol. 2, Yorkin Publications, 2007, p. 1326. Gale eBooks, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX2588816625/GVRL?u=wikipedia&sid=GVRL&xid=e39296a0. Accessed 15 Apr. 2021.
  2. ^ Jump up to: a b Swain, Martha H. (February 2000). "Miller, Emma Guffey (1874-1970), Democratic party activist and feminist". American National Biography. doi:10.1093/anb/9780198606697.article.0700203. Retrieved 2021-04-16.
  3. ^ Jump up to: a b c d e "Mrs. Emma Galley Miller, 95, Of Democratic Committee Dies". The New York Times. 1970-02-25. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-04-15.
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